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17th of Jan, 2011

Facebook shares more of your private info

Looks like Facebook might have had a few people complaining about this over the weekend, they’ve just posted on their development blog that the feature will be removed whilst they work out how to communicate the change, and the implications of the change, better.

If you’ve entered your address and telephone number into your Facebook profile, you might want to check the privacy screen next time you allow a third party app access to your profile. This friday just gone (14th January 2011) Facebook changed it’s policy ever so slightly to allow developers of third party applications access to your address and mobile phone number. Facebook will tell you that this is perfectly safe, as you need to give the app permission to see this data – it’s not automatically available to the developer.

However, can you remember the last time you actually looked at the ‘Request for Access’ window that appears, would you notice the addition of ‘Current address and mobile phone number’ amongst the other things you’re granting the app access to?

If you’re happy with this information being taken by the app then click away and don’t worry. If you’re not happy (I can’t really think why anyone would be) then either read the Facebook Request for Access page a little better and tick and untick accordingly, or if you’re not sure you’ll remember, remove your address and phone numbers from Facebook altogether.